Though she was only 10 when she arrived in Israel, Mina Erental has strong and bitter memories of the preceding year. Her family had moved from Gorky in Soviet Russia to Wroclaw, Poland.
“In Russia, despite the antisemitism, I did not experience alienation. It was slight and almost imperceptible. I was like everyone else. In Poland, I experienced real hatred for Jews that was incomprehensible to a nine-year-old girl,” she related.
Whereas in Gorky, she had attended a state school, in Wroclaw she finally would get a Jewish education – but at a price.
“On the tram ride to the Jewish school, adults and children stood in the street every day and threw stones at us. Just because we were Jewish children. The driver, who saw them gathering, would shout, ‘Children, get under the bench!’ so we would not get hurt. These were the first words I learned in Polish.”
Against that unpleasant backdrop, she also vividly remembers her first impressions of Israel when her family arrived in 1958 and settled in Givat Nesher, a neighborhood of new immigrants in the Haifa district.
“The fascinating thing I experienced as a child in Israel was freedom, nature, the sea, and what seemed like eternal summer,” she recalled.
“But there was also the foreignness, the difficulty of language and communication. And then the desire to belong. It took a few years to adapt,” she added.
She did indeed adapt, joining a youth movement and majoring in mechanical engineering in high school. She entered the military in 1967 and served in the navy as a draftswoman.
“I married Zvi Erental in 1969, immediately after my discharge from the navy. We moved to Eilat, where we built our home and where our daughters, Inbar and Rinat, were born,” she said. “We lived in Eilat for 11 years, and my husband worked for the Israel Electric Corporation.”
For two of those years, she taught first grade. For the other nine years, she worked as a construction and quality surveying technician for Solel Boneh, one of Israel’s oldest and largest construction and civil engineering companies.
In 1980, her husband’s employer transferred him to the North, so Erental returned to the familiar landscape of her childhood. The family settled in Kiryat Bialik, named for the Israeli national poet Hayim Nahman Bialik. This is one of the five Krayot bayside suburbs to the north of Haifa, referred to collectively as “the Krayot.”
Soon after, she began a five-year degree in mechanical engineering at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, having won a scholarship from Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, where she worked from 1981 to 1986.
THROUGHOUT THE years, she has studied a wide variety of disciplines, such as interior design, feng shui, astrology, plastic art, sculpture, painting, and digital creation.
She learned the art of stained glass at an art school and supported herself with this craft for a few years. One of her stained-glass works is in the permanent menorah collection at the Wolfson Museum of Jewish Art at Heichal Shlomo in Jerusalem.
“It was a good mix,” she said of her many varied endeavors. “This is how I gained knowledge and experience.”
In Kiryat Bialik, Erental has long been quite active in civic affairs. In 2021, she was awarded the title “Honored of the City.”
“I volunteer in various settings,” she explained.
“I write, edit, and interview for Kiryat Bialik Community Television, where I am the studio manager. My work involves producing content and interviewing local figures. My work at a community television station allows me to combine my love of writing with journalistic and creative work,” she said.
She also volunteers as a guide for the elderly and new immigrants at the Beit Katz Museum, which showcases the history of the city of Kiryat Bialik.
Harking back to her days as a teacher, Erental volunteers in local schools. She teaches reading for pleasure, and she teaches Ethiopian immigrants Hebrew, as well as tutoring children from Ethiopian families in whatever subjects they need help with.
On top of all that, through her long and varied career, she has managed several businesses and professional teams.
The grandmother of five grandchildren, “who are the love of my life,” has now lived in Israel for 66 years. She has never ceased loving Israel, the sense of freedom, “and the wonderful, warm people. I love the Jewish tradition and belonging to this wonderful country that I am lucky enough to live in.”
Of course, she has seen many changes in the country. Not all are positive.
“The biggest change is the immoral leadership of this wonderful nation,” she said. If she could change one thing about Israel, this would be the area she’d pinpoint for improvement.
She further reflected that it seems people, in general, used to be more caring, empathetic, and inclusive. “They would smile at you on the street and were polite, thoughtful, generous, affectionate, patient, and understanding. I miss that,” she lamented.
Hopes for the future
Erental not only dreams of a better Israel, a more caring and less corrupt government, and greater tolerance – on a personal level, she very much hopes to continue developing artistically.
Her goal, she said, is “to break boundaries, achieve goals, improve my abilities, and develop an artistic life with meaning and touch people with my creations.”■